Page:Jesse Lynch Williams - Why Marry.djvu/17

 ADVANCE NOTICE BY THE AUTHOR

O NE afternoon shortly before the New York "opening" of this comedy a most estimable lady sat down to make me a cup of tea.

"Now, do tell me, what is your play about?" she inquired with commendable enthusiasm. For, being a true woman, she had early achieved the becoming habit of letting members of the superior sex talk about themselves.

"'Why Marry?'" said I, "tells the truth about marriage."

"Oh, why," she expostulated, "why write unpleasant plays?"

"But it is not 'unpleasant.'"

"Then it isn't true!" she exclaimed. "That is, I mean—I mean—did you say cream or lemon?"

And in the pause which accompanied the pouring of the cream I detected the look of one realizing too late that it is always better to think before speaking.

This little incident, it seemed to me, epitomizes charmingly the attitude of "our nicest people" toward our fundamental institution. The truth about marriage must be unpleasant. ix